A state election will be held this year for Queensland. Antony Green notes possible dates on his blog, stating that the last election was held in March 2009 (here is our thread on that election).

Anyway, as Antony Green points out, the last election was held in March 2009, so the Parliament reaches full term in March. The latest possible date for an election would be in June, so we're looking at an election to be held in the first half of this year. There will be municipal elections held on the last Saturday of March (because municipal government is constituted by an Act of Parliament, rather than constitutional recognition, all council elections across the state are held on the same day and set as a fixed date, with four year terms... to be precise, the final Saturday of March, every four years, starting in 2000).

The Premier is unlikely to want to hold an election conflicting with the council ones (especially as a fair swag of seats are located in the Brisbane City Council area, with the former Lord Mayor running leader of the LNP, and the Brisbane City Council being partisan, unlike most other councils). Labor is in opposition in the Council, with quite a few seats to try to claw back. Labor is unpopular at a state level and I doubt they'd want that rubbing off in the Brisbane City Council, where they'll be trying to pick up wards. Additionally, a state election will make it difficult for council Labor to get media and make it harder to mount a campaign, so I think this makes it even less likely that these elections will be close together.

I therefore think that the election will be held in February, probably mid-February, to give a chance for Labor to run a six week campaign for council. This is precisely what happened in 2004, when the state election was called for mid-Feb and the municipal elections were held at the end of March.

I hear from my friends in Queensland the ALP will have a hard time winning this one.

Whereabouts are your friends from? I grew up on the south side of Brisbane

Polls are suggesting Labor will certainly struggle at the election, although the polls have had the LNP in front before, and yet the conservative parties have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in plenty of times previously.

Since 1989, the Labor party has only lost one election (1995 - following a by-election held in the seat of Mundingburra, after the Court of Disputed Returns overturned the original election result). Even following the 1995 election, the then Coalition (since then, merged into a single party) governed in minority with the support of an independent.

Another Antony Green blog post mentions the latest Newspoll (50% LNP, 27% Labor, resulting in an estimated 61%-39% 2PP). He goes further, however, translating the federal election 2PP results to state electorates. Exceptional work, really (although nothing more than you'd expect from him). Additionally, he considers some of the marginals and discusses the impact optional preferential voting might have on those results. There are a few important things to note - he isn't making a projection, he's looking at historic results and showing them in a different manner to how they may have previously been considered - it's useful for analysis, but not a prediction. Indeed, he emphasises that over the past two decades, federal election results have not provided an accurate guide to state election results.

It's also important to recognise that these results are based on the Two Party Preferred results, not the Two Candidate Preferred results. This is important for a couple of reasons - it doesn't factor in that some of the North-Western Booths are represented by the independent Bob Katter federally. Katter has since formed his own party, which will be contesting the Queensland state election. If the party performs as well in the state seats in the federal electorate of Kennedy as it did at the federal election, some of those seats (and others, not in the federal electorate of Kennedy) may be picked up by those candidates instead of LNP candidates.

Additionally, some of these seats are held at the state level by independents, and two are held by members elected last election as LNP candidates, but who have subsequently switched over to Katter's party. The two held by Katter's Party are Dalrymple and Beaudesert. Beaudesert is the large roundish one to the south of Logan... if you go to the Southern Inset and go from east to west along the border, the southernmost seats are Currumbin, Mudgeeraba and then Beaudesert.Dalrymple is the elongated seat running North-South in northern Queensland, inland a little... it's the hinterlands, inland from Townsville, is probably the best way to describe it. My descriptions aren't particularly good. Here is the Electoral Commission website with maps of each electorate, and some region-wide maps.

Anyway, here are the 2010 federal results by state electorate, as calculated by Antony Green. A bigger version is in the Gallery:

2009 Queensland Two Candidate Preferred Results by State Electoral District

2006 Queensland Two Candidate Preferred Results by State Electoral DistrictImportant to realise that these are NOTIONAL results, as there was a redistribution between the 2006 and 2009 elections

2008 Brisbane City Council - Ward ElectionsThese are the 2PP margins for Brisbane City Council ward councillors - add 50% on for the 2PP result... it's an early map of mine, I'm sorry.

2008 Brisbane City Council - Lord Mayor by WardThe Brisbane Lord Mayor is elected at-large across the city, however this map shows the 2PP result for the Lord Mayor in each ward. The LNP leader at the current state election was the Lord Mayor returned at this city council election. He was obviously popular in all parts of the city, however not all of his candidates were carried along with him (obviously). Note that he quite comfortably won wards in the area where he is now running as a candidate.

On the phone and tomorrow's a public holiday so won't be near a computer for a couple of days, so can't post a link here. Perhaps someone could find a good article from The Australian or The Courier Mail?

I still expect the gap to close, those approval numbers simply don't add up to a result anything like 58-42. I guess it shows how toxic the ALP brand is right now.

Newspoll calculates 2PP based mathematically on preference flows at the last election and is quite accurate at giving a 2PP result based on any set of primary figures. Antony Green had a good post about it last week on his blog (links already provided to blog, article is about Reachtel polling). In short, Queensland's optional preferential system results in larger 2PP margins for the primary vote leader than would be the case under compulsory preferential voting. This is because historically, in both Queensland and New South Wales, half the voters or thereabouts just vote 1. This is equally the case with minor party voters whose preferences are most likely to be distributed. Basically, those primary vote figures quoted by Newspoll are likely to yield those 2PP results, Newspoll doesn't force people to pick from the two major parties in their polling, just their primary vote, and then mathematically estimate a distribution of preferences.

Antony Green has uploaded a brilliant political history of the Queensland Parliament timeline to his blog. Using the slider at the bottom, you can change the date and see how the composition of the Parliament has changed over time. I strongly recommend taking a look if you're interested in Queensland politics.

I've seen photos of Labor's election signs up there... candidates and MPs are completely leaving the party name and logo off their signs - just putting their own name and the electorate name - no mention whatsoever of "Labor"

I've seen photos of Labor's election signs up there... candidates and MPs are completely leaving the party name and logo off their signs - just putting their own name and the electorate name - no mention whatsoever of "Labor"

I've seen photos of Labor's election signs up there... candidates and MPs are completely leaving the party name and logo off their signs - just putting their own name and the electorate name - no mention whatsoever of "Labor"

Taking a leaf out of the LibDem playbook there.

Didn't the LibDems end up doing significantly worse than the polls suggested, though?

I've seen photos of Labor's election signs up there... candidates and MPs are completely leaving the party name and logo off their signs - just putting their own name and the electorate name - no mention whatsoever of "Labor"

Taking a leaf out of the LibDem playbook there.

Didn't the LibDems end up doing significantly worse than the polls suggested, though?

Yeah, but i'm meaning in elections we've had since the coalition formed.

I took a look at a website that collates odds from different betting websites (was going to post the link, but I suspect it may be against the TOS to do so). Anyway, there were four websites willing to take bets on party to win the Queensland election, with all four giving tightest odds for the LNP (although a couple of the sites referred to them as "Coalition"). These odds ranged from $1.06 to $1.50. At least one website offered odds on every single electorate, with two others offering odds on some electorates. In each case, all three betting websites backed the same favourite (it could be argued they disagreed in the case of Mt Isa, but it's really the way it's presented... one website didn't list Katter's Party and had "Any Other" as the favourite, whereas the other site listed Katter's Party as the favourite and didn't offer odds on "Any Other"). I think they've overstated the LNP's electoral odds on the per seat basis, but here are the figures (putting incumbent party in brackets after):

It seems that Labor's intensely grubby and personally negative campaign against Campbell Newman has backfired, with a Galaxy Poll in today's Sunday Mail showing that the Premier's approvals have crashed seven points in the past month to just 36%. Her disapprovals have jumped nine points to 61%. The 2PP would be 60-40 if the election replicated the poll. Labor's primary vote is 30%, while the LNP primary vote is just below 50%.

It seems that Labor's intensely grubby and personally negative campaign against Campbell Newman has backfired, with a Galaxy Poll in today's Sunday Mail showing that the Premier's approvals have crashed seven points in the past month to just 36%. Her disapprovals have jumped nine points to 61%. The 2PP would be 60-40 if the election replicated the poll. Labor's primary vote is 30%, while the LNP primary vote is just below 50%.

It seems that Labor's intensely grubby and personally negative campaign against Campbell Newman has backfired, with a Galaxy Poll in today's Sunday Mail showing that the Premier's approvals have crashed seven points in the past month to just 36%. Her disapprovals have jumped nine points to 61%. The 2PP would be 60-40 if the election replicated the poll. Labor's primary vote is 30%, while the LNP primary vote is just below 50%.

Has he pulled ahead in his own constituency yet?

He was ahead, then two polls last week put him behind, but a Newspoll published on Friday had him back ahead at 52-48 with a primary vote of 49 compared to Labor's 44. Antony Green updated his blog post on the topic to reflect that (first paragraph).

What happened? It looked like Bligh was stabilizing in the polls recently?

It had been a while since the last statewide poll, there were a couple of Ashgrove-specific polls of late, those may be the polls you remember? I don't think there were any statewide polls showing Labor closing the gap in a relevant manner.